When I left the table at the Bourbon Steakhouse in the Fairmont Princess, I put my staff-signed birthday card in the vest pocket of the black leather jacket I had worn. I had grabbed the jacket just as we left. It finally felt like it was autumn enough to wear it.
But the reason I had worn it was because it had belonged to my Great-Uncle Dick. He had gifted it to me last November when I visited him. It had been the last thing he had done during our visit, right as I was about to go out the door. He had directed me to the jacket in the closet by the door, asking if I wanted it. He is a much smaller man than me, but it fit perfectly.
When I took it off my coat rack yesterday to wear it out, it had been almost exactly twenty-four hours since I had gotten the message pop-up on my laptop. It was from "Laurie" and it simply said "My father died this morning."
It took me a few seconds to process who Laurie was, and then I realized it was Dick's daughter, who lives in Reno. She is my late mother's cousin. I haven't actually seen her since 1975 when Dick brought his family to visit his sister, my grandmother, at their home in Iowa.
Last year after my visit, I interacted with Laurie. I told her I had remembered that visit. Normally I was the oldest of the kids around, but for once I saw the background filled with a teenagers jumping around and playing wildly with joy. Laurie had said she remembered the visit as well, especially as it was the first time she had ever seen lightning bugs, which are something I associate with being in my grandparent's backyard, but which I missed when when we moved to Colorado, where they are much more rare than the midwest.
I had told Laurie that I wanted to be notified with any developments with her father. She had been true to word when he went into the hospital in April, and placed on hospice watch by the doctor. But then he had recovered and went home, defying the doctor's pronouncement of doom.
Laurie told me that he had died peacefully. I figured he must have died about the time that Facebook went into its massive worldwide shutdown yesterday, so I will always have that event to mark it in the historical timeline of my memory.
Of course I am brutally sad about this, and I can barely begin to think of all that has been lost. He was the last of his family of eight siblings. He was the last person from that generation. He was the last person to know my grandparents in their prime. He was the last person to know my great-grandfather, whom he last saw in the late 1940s, even though he lived to 1974. They did not have a good relationship. But all access to memories of those people is gone know.
He was born in 1925. He served in the 15th Air Force during World War II, with the 97th Bomb Group, flying missions out of Foggia, Italy. He participated in the only allied bombing of Prague.
He went to court reporter school after the war. He went went in the late 1950s and founded his own court reporting firm in Reno. He bought property throughout Nevada. During out last meeting he told me about land he had bought. We both agreed that Gardnerville, which is just south of Reno, was a boom town. "If I were starting out again, that's where I'd buy land."
He met Marilyn Monroe when she was in Reno at the courthouse filming The Misfits, which was her last movie. He got to see her off camera, the real Norma Jean Baker, and see her turn into "Marilyn Monroe" when fans arrived. She was a completely different person, he said, the way she transformed.
That day last November, when I left him with the gifted leather jacket, I had driven up to Lake Tahoe where I had dined at his favorite steakhouse, the Eagle's Nest. That was one of the reasons I had accepted Ginger's offer at the last minute, and decided we should go to a steakhouse on my birthday.
I can barely imagine a world without all those people in it, who once filled the backyard of my grandparent's house on Hunziker Drive in Ames, that white colonial with its big backyard. My mother's cousins are still alive, and so are me and my sisters. But I am estranged from my sisters, and I barely know my mother's cousins. Perhaps I will meet them if I can get up to Reno for the memorial. I told Laurie to keep me in the loop.
Dick was the last of my family I could speak openly to about my opinions of the world. He voted for the same person I did. When I told him last November that justice would be done, and that the stolen election would rectified, he growled "good!".
I'm so glad I got to see him that last time. For some reason I knew it would be the last time. His body was failing him, it was easy to see. He was not comfortable, to say the least, even though he held on to living independently until the end.
Among the reasons I am glad is that during our last visit, I got to tell him how much I had loved my grandparents--his older sister and her husband, who had already served in the War in Italy.
"Really?" he said. I was almost in tears explaining. It touched him to hear it, and somehow I could see it gave me some peace, to hear such an expression of love within our family, especially since his own granddaughter had cut off contact with him over politics, something she will bitterly regret one day.
"He thought highly of you," Laurie said, after I sent a long text speaking of my grief.
It was one of the best things anyone has ever said to me.
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